A preferred form of projection lenses for wide screen television is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,438,081, 4,300,817 and 4,526,442 as well as co-pending U.S. application Ser. No. 280,785, all assigned to the assignee of the present application.
In said previous patents and application, the lens units have been referred to as groups which perform specific or distinct optical functions. However, in accordance with present United States Patent and Trademark Office requirements, the overall lens will be defined in terms of optical "units". It will be understood that the term "unit" refers to one or more optical elements or components air spaced from another optical unit which performs one or more specified optical functions in the overall lens design.
It is well known to one skilled in the art that a specified optical function(s) of a unit or group in an overall lens may be accomplished by using one element or component or more than one element or component dependent upon the correction or function desired. A decision as to whether one or more elements is used as a lens unit in an overall lens design may be based on various considerations, including but not limited to, ultimate performance of the overall lens, ultimate costs of the lens, acceptable size of the lens, etc. Accordingly, in the following specification and appended claims, the term"lens unit" refers to one or more lens elements or lens components which provide a specified optical function or functions in the design of the overall lens.
The lenses disclosed in the aforementioned patents and application generally comprise three lens units: from the image end a first lens unit of small optical power; a second lens unit including a biconvex element which supplies all or substantially all of the positive power of the lens; and a third lens unit having a concave surface towards the image end of the lens, serving as a field flattener, and essentially correcting the Petzval curvature of the first and second groups.
The lenses, as disclosed, are designed for use with a surface of a cathode ray tube (CRT). The lenses of U.S. Pat. No. 4,300,817, utilizing a single biconvex element in the second lens unit, all have an equivalent focal length (EFL) of 127 millimeters or greater, while the lenses of U.S. Pat. No. 4,348,081, which utilize a two-element lens unit, including the biconvex element, may have an EFL reduced to 85 millimeters as designed for direct projection for a five inch diagonal CRT. The lenses described in the co-pending application are designed to have a fold in the optical axis between the first and second lens units and have been designed so that the EFL is as low as 126 millimeters. These EFL's are for CRT screens having a viewing surface with an approximate five inch diagonal.
Projection TV sets are rather bulky and require high volume cabinets. One manner of reducing the cabinet size is to decrease the EFL of the projection lenses. This, of course, increases the field angle of the lens.
A further consideration is introduced wherein a spacing is provided between the screen of the CRT and the third lens unit of the projection lens. This spacing may be required for the inclusion of a liquid cooling material and a window necessary to enclose the coolant against the face of the CRT. This additional spacing between the face of the CRT causes the third negative lens unit to contribute more negative power, which must be compensated by increased power in the positive second lens unit.
An effect of increasing the angular coverage of the lens as a result of decreasing the EFL, is that the aberrations become more difficult to correct. A single biconvex element second lens unit, as shown in the aforementioned patents, does not provide the lens designer adequate degrees of freedom to correct for the resulting astigmatism and distortion. By dividing the optical power of the second lens unit, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,348,081, the EFL may be shortened. However, merely splitting the optical power of the second lens unit into two elements to obtain additional degrees of optical design freedom, does not provide acceptable contrast and resolution where the angular coverage of the projection lenses is required to be in excess of twenty-seven degrees, semi-field.
The requirement that there be a fold in the optical axis between the first and second lens units to accomodate a mirror as shown in the aforementioned co-pending application, requires that a large space be designed between the first and lens units. This requirement further complicates the correction of astigmatism. In effect, the large airspace between the first and second lens units eliminates a degree of design freedom, thus reducing contrast and resolution. The EFL of the lens is a function in the total conjugate distance between the CRT and the display screen. This is shown by the relationship EQU OL=EFL(1+1/M)+EFL(1+M)
where OL is the overall conjugate distance of the system from object to image
EFL (1+M) is the distance from the image to the first principal point of the lens PA1 EFL (1+1/M) is the distance from the object to the second principal point of the lens and PA1 M is the magnification of the system expressed as the ratio of object height to image height.
Therefore, in order to decrease the total distance between the CRT and the screen, it is necessary to reduce the EFL.
In addition to the foregoing objects of compactness of the lens with greater field angle is a problem presented by newer-design color CRT's.
The phosphors used in newer CRT's are designed to have an increased light output. A result of this increased output is a wider spectral output and considerable color beyond the middle of the range for each of the tubes. For example, the green tube now has a considerable amount of blue and red and the blue tube has a considerable amount of green. Due to these wide spectral ranges in each tube, chromatic aberration in lenses of the type described becomes noticeable.
The traditional technique of correcting for chromatic aberrations is to introduce a component of negative power having considerably greater dispersion than that of an adjacent positive element. However, if this method were employed completely in the above described lenses, the amount of negative optical power that would be required would be excessive and aberrations would be considerably more difficult to correct. If one attempted full color correction, the lateral chromatic aberrations would be increased.
In the present invention, partial color correction is made to reduce axial chromatic aberration and lateral chromatic aberrations are kept within reasonable limits.